Edward Albee'sA Delicate Balance only looks like a suburban comedy. It's really an existential nightmare slightly more gussied up than your average slasher movie. Oh, blood flows in this eviscerating drama, but it's of a more metaphorical variety than you'll find in the Saw franchise. Between the ravages of time and the mighty pen of Albee, the family on stage has absolutely no chance at all.

And their demise is so very delicious. (Also delicious: Albee himself was in the audience for Thursday's opening-night performance.)

A Delicate Balance opens Aurora's 20th season, and as directed by Artistic Director Tom Ross, it's a perfect example of why the Aurora is such a glorious part of the Bay Area theater scene. An intimate theater and a thrust stage so deep it's practically in the round make the Aurora a crucible in which outstanding writing and superb performances combine and, with luck and a good director, ignite. To watch an actor lose herself or himself in an exquisitely crafted part is one of the greatest pleasures in the theater, and there's no better vantage point for this than the Aurora.

One of the great things about Bay Area theater is watching local actors grow into greatness.
They may or may not strike off to find fortune and fame in New York or Los Angeles, or they may choose to stay here and continue doing as much good work as they can.
The Aurora Theatre Company’s next show, George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, is...

Kimberly King (with Cassidy Brown as Father Flynn) plays the stern Sister Aloysius in the TheatreWorks production of Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by John Patrick Shanley. Photos by David Allen
For a while, Kimberly King and her husband, Ken Grantham, were sort of the first couple of Bay Area theater.
From their Berkeley base, they performed all over the...